Executive Engagement

I shake my head and take another sip of the scotch. Honestly, I have no fucking clue what’s going on anymore. Every time it seems like I’m making some progress or even Vivian and I are getting somewhere or Carter and I are patching things up, something seems to drop and make things even worse.

I mean, this has been a litany of getting slapped around by life, if you ask me. Talk about what could go wrong actually going wrong? It’s as if someone sat down and made a list of all the bad things that could happen to us and then actually made them happen. All so someone else could read about it and be entertained.

Well, as much as I hope you are entertained, I hope you fucking know that it's not fun being impeached by the people you used to call your friends.

Or watching the woman you love being forced to stay the fuck away from you.

Or watching someone you could have gotten along with pretty well end up stabbing you in the fucking back.

So, yeah, I hope you’re entertained. Because my life is a piece of shit right about now.

"I don’t even know if I can save myself right now, John," I say, taking a deep sigh.

He looks at me and says, "Sure you can, Liam. You’re just going to need the mental discipline to be able to follow through."

I look at him with a puzzled expression as he continues. "You’re going to need to follow along with what Carter is going to do and blame everything on Vivian Hawthorne. How you were working toward a deal with Carter before Vivian came in the picture. How the only reason you spoke to Tina Ling was to get all possible viewpoints. Remember, Tina and Vivian were at some fundraiser a couple weeks ago put on by China First Bank. That’s where you snare that sumbitch Carter too. How because you don’t play the money game they’re trying to get you out."

I’m fucking shocked as I look at the lawyer sitting in front of me.

"Jesus, you want to take a breath in between stabbing people in the back that many times, John?" I ask my lawyer. "I don’t think Vivian or Carter would ever fucking work with Tina Ling, and I don’t see how Vivian could ever have led us to the shit show that’s going on right now."

John shrugs. "It doesn’t matter," he says looking at me with an almost open expression. "What matters is that we start getting it out there and get the media to start smelling for it. Before you know it, they’ll have done most of the work for us. They’ll dig out a story, but more than likely they’ll put enough allegations and half-facts that they find out there that it’ll cloudy up the waters enough to get you out of the predicament you’re in now."

Jesus fucking Christ. John leans back in his chair, satisfied with himself for coming up with a brilliant approach.

"How long you been doing this, John?" I ask. He’s supposedly one of the best political operatives there are in the state. And I can see why. The man has the compassion of a snake.

"Fifteen years," he beams at me proudly. "I’ve helped too many politicians through too many scandals. I can’t even remember what they are anymore.

John is the type of consultant and operative that people call when shit really starts hitting the fan hard. He’s the person they call when they need someone to fix up a giant and colossal fuckup that they may have committed.

He’s also probably right. Muddy up the waters. Confuse people. Give them a common enemy to get angry at. And they’ll devote less of their energies toward trying to crucify me. It’s a model that politicians on both sides of the aisle have used before. And they’ll use it again.

What’s even more fucking telling is that John doesn’t have any sort of allegiance to the fucking truth. The truth is to him whatever he fashions and other people believe. If all of a sudden people started believing in ghosts, John would probably accept it. But he’d have a plan ready to get people to start believing anything else as well.

There’s nothing fucking real about this man. It’s all 100% fake.

That’s not what I got into politics for. There’s nothing fake in how I grew up. Nothing fake in the misery of being poor.

"John?" I ask, walking towards the hallway as I head out the library.

"Yeah, Liam?" he answers, curious as to why I’m walking away.

"Get the fuck out of my house," I say to him.

There’s a pause. I hear him sigh and shuffle some papers in the other room and slowly get up and walk down the hardwood floors till he comes to the hallway.

"You sure?" he asks with a pained expression. "It’s only going to get uglier."

I shake my head. "I don’t care how ugly everyone else gets," I tell him. "I didn’t get into politics to start throwing people under the bus."

John nods. "You’re a good man, Liam," he says to me as he walks out the door. He pauses and looks at me. "Maybe too good for this game."

I close the door and take a sip of the scotch I’m still holding. I got home to take this meeting with John and decided midway through that I needed a drink. I just didn’t want to deal with the level of fucking bullshit that saving myself was going to entail.

And that’s the thing, isn’t it? I could maybe save myself. Throw some people under the bus. Owe a few favors.

But then what? Someone else would come knocking looking to get back at me for fucking over their friends. Like a fucking vendetta. And someone I owed favors to would collect. And I’d be building more fucking alliances and spend even more time protecting my fucking back.